Computer Concepts and Terminology. Serial Port: Serial Parallel USB FireWire. (Universal Serial Bus) is a newer type of serial connection that is. High Performance Serial Bus. A thin serial cable rather than the thicker parallel cable you now use to your printer. Compares FireWire to USB and SCSI.

An USB port is a kind of serial port that computers and devices can use to communicate. It defines the connectors and cables, as well as the physical and link layer protocols that devices must use to communicate over USB. In this sense, it's similar to Ethernet, Firewire or other communication protocols. At a physical level, USB is a serial protocol, meaning that bits are sent in a serial fashion. Old serial RS-232 ports (traditionally named COMx under Windows) are not related to modern USB architecture. Old serial ports used a simpler and slower communication protocol (RS-232) that was usually handled by a family of chips called s, whereas USB communication requires more complex hardware.

So, the physical and link-layer characteristics of these two protocols are very different. While both are serial protocols, USB allows for several devices to share the same bus (traditional serial ports don't) and communication speed is much higher in USB.

Error detection and correction, flow control and other data transfer concerns are better handled in USB. COM ports are a Windows abstraction to represent any communication port. In other operating systems other names are used. In Linux, the COM1 port is represented by the device /dev/ttyS0. Note that this is no more than an abstraction. It is possible (and often done) to use serial ports that are not using the traditional, physical, serial port.

In fact, you can create operating system drivers that provide serial ports that are in fact communicating over Ethernet, USB, IP or any other communication layer. The COM port at operating system level is no more than an abstraction to represent a communications port. Filesalvage Serial Number Mac. Mobile phones offer a variety of services through their USB port. This often includes raw serial communication (which you can use in your application), but in many other cases the USB port provides other 'profiles' (usb mass storage, headphones, or whatever).

Broadcom Advanced Control Suite 4 there. All those profiles are standarized so you can plug your phone to a computer and establish a 'serial communication' channel, among other things, without having to code communication drivers for the computer or the phone. So, to answer your question, no, an USB port is not a COM port. It is an USB port. You can use it for serial communications, but you can also use it for other things.